blog – Ponder Anew

Life is so slow .

eptember 15, 2025

Good afternoon,

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,…. Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

I have reflected on ‘time’ moving slow in my life a few times in the blog. Time changed for me about nine months following my heart attack. It has consistently been slow ever since. I was struck again by this sense of time in the last month. Normally, my pharmacist gives me two weeks of ‘blister ‘ packs of medication. I have been on much of the same meds since 2007. But in late August he/she gave me four weeks of meds. It seems to have taken forever to get through this one month supply, and I have another week to go ! Even though it has gone on for so many years, it still has not become normal, and it still feels strange and unnatural.

This is my life. I no longer ask why, but I do wonder what it might mean for my spiritual journey ? But after 17 years of slow time, it does not really matter. Some cancer patients have told me time slows down for them for a while, but then it goes away. And many people say that time goes faster as they get older. I say today, ‘ it is only September 15th ‘.

Maybe I am being offered more time to think ? I do not feel the need to do more. And I do not get any more done with all this extra time. The biblical prophets do not talk about time slowing down. Jesus doesn’t say anything about it. I wonder if his final week slowed down for him, as he and his disciples had to deal with so much conflict and tension. My body was traumatized by my diabetes and heart attack. Others have had the same experience and time marches on for them. Time walks in slow motion for me.

May peace quicken its pace in all places of war and violence. AMEN

Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025

why write my story ?

September 22, 2025

Good evening,

It seems to me that I am posting later and later in the day. I wonder why ? I might still be getting used to a new rhythm in retirement. At the Mennonite Story four people have been on vacation, so I have been filling in a few more shifts ( like today ) than normal. When I was writing while still at Poole, the focus was the congregation. Maybe, I am still trying to see who is my audience, maybe it is still just for me.

I am really wondering about the situation in the United States and in Gaza being the reason my writing has been more challenging. I do not watch as much news, but what I hear is so distressing that it is hard to focus. Everyday Trump outdoes himself with something unbelievable. Today, he announced a connection between Tylenol and autism. He is not a doctor, but he makes the public statement. And the ruthless destruction of Gaza continues every day.

And I have been thinking about my life, and if a story, my story, needs to be written. I am a regular guy who has lived a relatively safe and unassuming life, mostly here in Canada. I have had some extraordinary health events in my life for sure, but why should I write my story ? I think it would be good for myself, and my family to have a record of my life events, and a little bit about my faith journey. I am still trying to figure it out to review my life in a public way, like a memoir. Why does my story need to be told ?
I keep coming back to the passage from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel.. He felt it important to write down an orderly account of the life of Jesus . This is Luke 1:1-4

‘ Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.’

Fred

a new blog

May 12, 2025

Good morning

To be a writer, you have to write every day. Even on those days when you have nothing to say or write, you are told to write. When writing Ponder Anew for Poole for five years, almost everyday, it gave meaning to my writing. At around 3 pm, when I had not written anything, I just started to write., and I sent something by the end of the day. It was used to connect myself and my ministry to the congregation. I miss it, but it is now another time in life and writing. You are part of a new audience, but with some of the same people. What do you want me to write about ? I am posting my blogs on WordPress so the audience is a little bit larger.

Scholars tell writers that we have to know your audience. It is better than just writing into the clear blue sky, but maybe, I will try to find my audience by writing into the cloudy and rainy sky. .So, as I move into my next phase of writing, bear with me.

Monika Pieper Landoni’s last line of her 2025 haiku haunts my writing, thinking and living, ” Am I complicit ? ” Someone has said, ‘ if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.” They, and they are hard to find, say this about colonialism, but it could be said about other social, moral or ethical life situations that we have to confront.

We had a wonderful time in Jordan with our daughter Hannah and her husband Alaa. Just across the Jordanian border was the war on Gaza and the West Bank. What can I do , am I complicit ? It is genocide carreid out by the state of Israel. They have been trying it since 1948, but now it is so violent and vicious. I write to PM Carney and my MP Tim Louis. I agree with the new Pope and the Secretary General of the United Nations, that the carnage must end now . But nothing. And the Palestinains continue to suffer daily. How can a country stop food from entering another place,and the international community can do nothing. And we watch on the internet live the starvation of children. What does this say about our ability to change what’s’ wrong in the world ? Am I complicit?

HAVE MERCY ON ALL OF US LORD. AMEN

Fred